Hot End cutting out before reaching ABS temp

I'm building my first printer, a MendelMax 1.5, and I can't get it to heat up to 230C. It goes up to 220 and stops. Uncle_Bob was great, he helped me explore Voltage problems to the point where I am quite sure it has to be something else. I am running a MAC, so I couldn't use the software package that I could download with the Marlin tweaked to match. I think I have a lot of settings that I need to tweak. Any ideas?

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/17/2013 05:50PM by Nununugent.

Oddly enough I'm running on a Mac as well. What did you have trouble downloading and running?

Honestly I didn't try to get anything other than Marlin. And almost everything I'm changing is in marlin. Is there something I can do in Marlin to change the top temp of the hotend?

On a Mac you can run:

1) The Arduino IDE to edit and compile the downloaded Marlin package and upload it.
2) Pronterface to control the printer via the USB
3) Slic3r to convert an stl to custom gcode for your printer
4) Cura to replace Pronterface and Slic3r
5) Plesant 3D to do simple filps on st files and to look at stl files
6) OpenSCAD to do CAD and / or modify stuff off of thing verse at a higher level than an stl

All of that is 100% free / no charge / no begging software. Most of it is open source and mainstream use in the 3d printer world.

Simple check on the hot end - plug it into the power supply. Watch the temperature with the Ramps. See if it ever gets to 225 or not. Watch close if it's a J-Head (or similar). It won't like anything over 230. Long before that, make very sure you are not using thermistor 6 in the standard Marlin distribution.

Thanks for all the info! I have arduino IDE, pronterface and slic3er. I tried to get slicer to work a few times and it crashed on me when I was trying to export the file to pronterface. the MAC I am using is really old, running OSX 10.6, and it is no longer able to take OSX updates. I haven't had any prob with pronterface or arduino IDE yet. If I can't run Slic3r I'll check out Cura. I also have a brand new MacBook Pro, but if I steal it away down to the basement my family might mutiny! I see myself using my new computer to work with CAD stuff to make files and using the old one to churn out files for the printer in the basement. If needed I was thinking of putting Linux on the old one, but so far mabie not. perhaps I should prepare the file in slic3er on my new computer and just using the old one to control the printer(s!).

Silc3r can have some issues with specific files. It does than on all machines and on all operating systems. It's no better / no worse than the other slicing programs in that regard. I find about one file in 20 has issues.

I'd bet your basement machine is still an Intel based version. That should be fine for all this stuff. It'll run faster on the new machine and the display may look nicer, but the but it'll still work on the older machine. By no means take that to mean that you should not run right out and get another Mac ..